Shut Up

Today I had one of those mornings with my daughter where we had a difficult interaction and then had to part for four days when I dropped her at her Dad's. Not only does it hurt extra when that happens, but I think there is a correlation between our difficult interactions and switch days.

I can see so much of myself in my daughter, and when I heard this song today after she was gone, I thought of her with her hands over her ears this morning as she was refusing to listen to me, and I thought how these lyrics could also have been the soundtrack in my own head when I was eight years old and my parents were trying to talk to me:

Shut up

Just shut up

Shut up [3x]

Shut it up, just shut up

Shut up

Just shut up

Shut up [3x]

Shut it up, just shut up

It's good for me to tie these sorts of interactions in with me as a little girl, because I think that one of the reasons I get so worked up sometimes has to do with old feelings that didn't get to come out then and need to come out now.

It doesn't feel good when I've parented in a manner of which I am not proud. But I'm taking the steps: I'm letting those old feelings come out (in appropriate ways); I apologized to my daughter; I'm reading a new parenting book to arm myself with new strategies; and we're changing our custody schedule in a way that I think is going to work better because I won't always have the end of my time with them coincide with the end of my work week (when I'm already really drained)...

It's all going to work out. I know that it working out might still mean she puts her hands over her ears sometimes and hears this song inside her head, but that's part of being a kid. What it's not going to continue to include is me overreacting to things she says and does because of my own exhaustion or residual anger. Mark my words!

Where is the Love?

I talked to my friend the other day, one of the most incredible people I know, someone who lives every day in poverty and with a debilitating illness. She and her boyfriend recently packed up their kids and moved from Chicago to Oklahoma, having heard that the economy was booming there and they'd be able to find jobs. They arrived, put their kids into the local public schools, and had to face two really tough realities:

1) My friend's medical card, which allowed her to see the doctor and get the prescriptions she needs to manage her illness, does not work in Oklahoma, and she doesn't have the money to pay for them out-of-pocket; and

2) Although there are help-wanted signs everywhere in Norman, and she and her boyfriend have filled out countless applications, they've yet to be called back after they turn in their applications. Unlike in Chicago, African-Americans make up a very small minority there, and it isn't a minority with which a lot of the other people are comfortable.

This number from the Black-Eyed Peas is a brilliant commentary on the only prescription that has a shot at curing these sorts of entrenched problems:

But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And when you hate then you're bound to get irate, yeah
Madness is what you demonstrate
And that's exactly how anger works and operates
Man, you gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate

Let your soul gravitate to the love, y'all, y'all

I'm off to meditate, let my soul gravitate to the love, and hope that will help it extend to those who haven't had the good fortune that I've had to know intimately someone whom others might judge unfavorably on the basis of her skin color or the way she talks.